Libya

2011

Dear Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib: The Committee to Protect Journalists has been monitoring with growing concern the difficulties that many foreign journalists have been experiencing in obtaining a visa to your country.

Matthew VanDyke returned home last week from Libya, arriving
at the Baltimore airport still dressed in combat fatigues. "I went there to
support the revolution," VanDyke declared. "My family did not know that when I
left. You don't tell your mother you're going off to fight a war."

What troubles us is that VanDyke told his mother that he was
going to Libya to be a journalist. So when he was captured on March 13 near
Brega, that's what she told us.

On
August 4, CPJ wrote to NATO Secretary
General Anders Fogh Rasmussen requesting information about the July 30 attacks
on broadcast facilities in Libya
in which NATO aircraft destroyed three broadcast dishes. As we noted in our
letter, CPJ is concerned any time a media outlet faces a military attack. Such
attacks can only be justified under international humanitarian law if the
facility is being used for military purposes or to incite violence against the
civilian population.

Tags:

New York, August 25, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of four Italian
journalists kidnapped Wednesday, but remains concerned about the safety of at
least six Libyan journalists who have been missing since the start of the
uprising in February.

New
York, August 24,
2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the news that U.S. journalist Matthew VanDyke escaped with
several inmates from Abu Salim prison in Tripoli
today. VanDyke's mother told CPJ that he called her with the news of his escape
and that he is safe and in good spirits. He also told his mother that he had
been kept in solitary confinement for much of his imprisonment. It was not
clear whether the prison was now controlled by rebels.

Tags:

About 35 international journalists remained holed up in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel today, unable to leave the location, according to news reports. New video from The Guardian, above, shows reporters and photojournalists inside the hotel. BBC correspondent Matthew Price said conditions "deteriorated massively" overnight as forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi patrolled the corridors.

UPDATE: Journalists in the Rixos Hotel have been allowed to leave, according to news accounts. CNN's Matthew Chance said the journalists negotiated with armed guards to win their release. The journalists left this afternoon local time in cars provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.